Just Jauntin'

So Much For a Year

Where has the time gone? It’s almost been a year since we left on what was supposed to be our dream trip and proceeded to continuously screw up our lives. To say the past year was a little over whelming at times would be an understatement. We had some of the best times we’ve ever had and we also had some of the worst times we ever had. This year really taught us a lot about who we were and what we actually wanted from life. Are there days when we wish we would have stuck out the trip a bit longer and worked things out? Absolutely. Are there days we regret running away from teaching? Never!

When your life plan completely unravels before your eyes you really have to improvise. Making the decision to come home was probably one of the hardest decisions we had to make (and surprisingly one we didn’t make in a split second either) but it was ultimately the best for us. Our whole lives up until that point had been comprised of split second decisions that we never really thought about what the consequences would be… until after we had made it. I remember in late July sitting in a grungy hotel room on Khao San road, completely defeated looking up flights home. We managed to convince ourselves that we just needed to relax, head to the islands and let things work themselves out. We figured we only wanted to go home because of the situation we had just ran from. Fast forward a week and we were sitting in our apartment looking up apartments and jobs in Vancouver. At that point we had realized that going home was going to be the best option for us.

We should have known the path ahead would be a disaster once we arrived for our flights back to Canada. I was successfully able to check-in but Tessa wasn’t. Her flight ticket didn’t process properly and the refund hadn’t cleared her credit card yet. Meaning that she was stuck in BKK until she could phone her bank and I had to start the long trek home by myself (my card had gotten stolen a few weeks before this so I didn’t even have one to help). The saddest moment was pulling out of that airport by myself and not knowing what would happen with my best friend. Little did we know that that was just the beginning of things to happen.

When we got back to Canada we felt like we really didn’t belong. We didn’t really have a place to live, any money, and our belongings were all packed away. We had planned to go to Vancouver but kept putting off trying to find an apartment (the drive was just something that we weren’t about) and finding jobs wasn’t going as planned either. On a whim (see a pattern here?) we decided that we would head down to Calgary and ended up landing a pretty sweet apartment within a few days of being here. This was lucky and unlucky at the same time. Lucky that we were able to find such a sweet apartment without needing references or jobs but unlucky in the fact that we still didn’t have jobs.

How we wish we got back to Canada instead

We ended up getting bar jobs which seemed pretty great at first. Plot twist: they were fucking awful. Having to deal with idiots all of the time was actually painful (and no I’m not talking about the drunks). We didn’t get paid enough to deal with the nonsense that came with it so after a month we quit. And by quit I mean we did exactly what we did in Thailand and walked out. We literally walked in one morning, went straight to the manager, and quit. I had screenshots of labor laws and had a big speech prepared for the way we were treated but it didn’t go as planned and he basically just gave us the silent treatment. (This trend was starting to get a little scary). I thought that because we were so used to running away from our problems travelling that the habit had just stuck with us once we got back, in all reality though, we just knew what we want and didn’t want to stick out something shitty.

Tessa had managed to land a nursing job and I had gotten a job at another shitty little part-time place. I pretty much spent all of October unemployed and went into a little bit of a dark place. And by dark I mean there were some days where I wouldn’t get out of bed or would sleep any chance I got because I was so miserable. During this time I really regretted making the decision to come home. I swear to god I applied for over 500 jobs, many of which I was over qualified for. Getting those rejection e-mails and not getting interviews was a huge slap in the face. But I kept going and eventually ended up getting a full-time job.

Now, you would think that things would start to look up for us since we were both employed, right? WRONG, WRONG – SO WRONG. We experienced November fourth, which if you haven’t heard the story yet I suggest you ask us for it the next time you see us. The short version is we were in an awkward situation, it was half price bottles of wine at OJs, and it ends with vomit…lots of vomit…everywhere. If that wasn’t unfortunate enough, Tessa totalled the new (to her) car that she had gotten when we got back from Canada. We were going to go to the gym but decided to go to Costco instead. Moral of this: NEVER SKIP THE GYM YOU’LL TOTAL YOUR CAR. The bad part was that she completely totalled her car, the good news is that we weren’t hurt at all. But it still added to the horrible year we were having.

As you might have recalled reading earlier I had applied to (I swear) over 500 jobs. I had only been at my new one for a month when I realized how much I hated it too. It was pretty much a call centre and I kept getting in trouble for how loud I am. If you know me, you know that it’s impossible for me to speak quietly. They didn’t want any of us to have any interactions so they put up walls on our desks when we were already in basically a closet. The day they did this I was in first and had a violent urge to get up and run away…but you can’t really do that when you have a year lease on an apartment and no money. So instead I checked my e-mail where low and behold a job I said would be my dream job back in AUGUST..AUGUST (4MONTHS) had e-mailed me wanting to interview me. I did the interview and got offered the job, I was beyond ecstatic…or so I thought. A few days later they e-mailed and said that some things had come up and they wouldn’t be able to hire me until sometime in the new year. I was absolutely crushed about this. So again this just added to the terrible year that we were already having.

Safe to say though that things have since turned around for us. We both got new vehicles, landed some dream jobs, and there haven’t been any tears or full days of napping and sleep for a while…even though I do miss the naps occasionally. Through it all we just kept going. There was one point where it felt like we had lost complete control of our lives and were just kind of going with the punches. Yeah it was completely horrible after we came back to Canada but if we wouldn’t have came back, we wouldn’t be in the places that we are today. For once in our lives it finally feels like we’re accomplishing things and really becoming adults.